Monday, April 18, 2011

Life is good for Bonnie-the-Jersey-Cow

She eats until she's full, grazing for all she's worth. Cows can put down a lot of grass in a short time because they don't chew their food; they swallow it whole and it goes to the rumen, which can hold up to fifty gallons.

Once the food she's eaten is nice and soft, it goes to the recticulum, where it's softened and digested even further and is formed into small wads of cud. Each cud returns to the cow's mouth and is chewed forty to fifty times, then swallowed. The food hastwo more stomachs to go through, each one softening and digesting the food a little more. This time of year, with all the green grass Bonnie is eating, we won't talk about what comes out the other end; sufficient to say it's pretty liquified and nasty.

Bonnie loves this time of year, and I think she's secretly glad her stupid son won't enter into the pen with the new grass.

Sometimes it's nice for a mom to get a break from the kid.

Clyde doesn't like the situation much, but we all have to grow up sometime.